Cloud computing systems may be provided on demand to one or more customers over a communication network (e.g., a wide area network, such as the Internet), thus relieving the customers of the responsibility of purchasing or leasing the underlying computing systems supporting the desired computing services. Further, in some operational environments, a cloud computing system may serve as a focal point for multiple, possibly numerous, client computing systems located remotely from the cloud computing system. Such a configuration may facilitate addition of the client computing systems to a larger distributed or collaborative system network, remote software provisioning of the client computing systems, operational management of the client computing systems, and so on.
While such a distributed computing system may facilitate a number of functions, such as sharing of information, that are beneficial to the individual client computing systems, overall system security may become a significant concern. For example, a malicious client computing system, by masquerading as a trusted client, may be able to access proprietary information stored in the cloud computing system. Moreover, by way of such access, a malicious actor may also be able to access and control one or more of the client computing systems communicatively coupled to the cloud computing system, thereby potentially causing improper operation of the client computing systems, as well as other systems connected thereto. Prior art systems do not adequately provide a mechanism for enrolling the client computing systems with the cloud computing system in an efficient and secure manner.
The headings provided herein are merely for convenience and do not necessarily affect the scope or meaning of the terms used.